


Scars

by kira892



Category: DCU, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 08:46:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3722611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira892/pseuds/kira892
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bart has his back to him. He isn’t wearing a shirt and the aggregation of jagged scars on his skin is on full display, grotesque and jarring. He’d known they were there for years but it isn’t until a few months ago, when they started dating that Jaime’s been exposed to them on a repetitive basis. He still isn’t used to seeing them and he probably never will be considering the familiarity of “used to” sounds way too frivolous and passive to him and there’s nothing frivolous or passive in the ugly way his gut lurches whenever he sees the raised clumps of discolored skin marking Bart in slashes and half crescents and circles and all manners of shapes whose origins Jaime couldn't stand thinking about for long lest nausea threatened to overcome him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scars

Jaime wakes up because it’s cold. The heater in his crappy apartment has this nasty habit of gleefully breaking down when the temperature drops so it's not like the cold is uncommon, what is uncommon in this case is usually, Jaime doesn’t mind because a human space heater would have been in bed with him. He frowns, cracking his eyes open and squinting through the glare of the bedside lamp. The space beside him is empty save for mussed up blankets and an open book, lying face down on the pillow. Jaime peers down at it and has to scrub at his eyes because for a second he thinks he’s imagining alien symbols on the cover. Before he could open them, the scarab helpfully pipes up and informs him that no, he’s not seeing things and the reason he doesn’t know what the markings on the cover are is because they’re from the Latin alphabet.

 

Jaime raises an eyebrow at the book dubiously and shakes his head, setting it on the bedside table before hauling himself out of bed to go looking for his human spaceheater.

 

He finds him in the living room,curled up on a stool he stole from the kitchen and dragged in front of the window and Jaime pauses for several long moments to stare. Bart has his back to him. He isn’t wearing a shirt and the aggregation of jagged scars on his skin is on full display, grotesque and jarring. He’d known they were there for years but it isn’t until a few months ago, when they started dating that Jaime’s been exposed to them on a repetitive basis. He still isn’t used to seeing them and he probably never will be considering the familiarity of “used to” sounds way too frivolous and passive to him and there’s _nothing_ frivolous or passive in the ugly way his gut lurches whenever he sees the raised clumps of discolored skin marking Bart in slashes and half crescents and circles and all manners of shapes whose origins Jaime couldn't stand thinking about for long lest nausea threatened to overcome him.

 

His eyes follow the pink edge of a large patch of burned skin hugging Bart’s left side, creeping up along his ribs and flaring upward into a twisted, ugly curve against his shoulder blade. Jaime feels the frown carve the lines of his mouth into something hard and heavy as he looks at it and reels a little in surprise, blinking when he spots the line of flowers, stars and smiley faces making a trail along the lower side of the burn, near the small of Bart’s back.

 

“Nice ink.” he says, taking an afghan draped over the back of the couch and walking over to Bart who looks at him over his shoulder with a smile.

 

“I know right? Aunt Dawn won an entire pack of temporary tats at school and she left them lying around. Which is just her loss. Finders keepers.”

 

Jaime shakes his head, draping half of the Afghan over himself and standing close enough to Bart that he could wrap the other half over his shoulder. “You’re ridiculous.” he says, yawning and slouching forward until he’s bent over Bart, arms sliding around his waist and chin hovering over his shoulder.

 

“Your face is ridiculous.” Bart says, reaching up to scrape his fingers over Jaime’s chin and tug at his beard.

 

Jaime grabs Bart’s hand in his own, opening his mouth to retort. His lips freeze and flatten themselves out into a straight line when he notices another scar. It’s long and jagged, slicing down in a clean, straight line from the base of Bart’s middle finger, across his palm and ending just above his wrist.

 

“Where did this one come from?” He asks softly, prying Bart’s fingers apart to better see. He runs a thumb down the length of the scar, carefully, warily pondering what had caused it.

 

_Formation and discoloration of the cicatrix suggests that a wound was inflicted by a blade. Scans also show signs of incineration, possibly in attempts to seal the wound or terminate infection._

 

The scarab drones on in his head and it’s voice makes Jaime feel something not unlike the overwhelming horror and shame that slowly crawled up his spine and squeezed his chest when Bart told him the truth about why he came back, something that made Jaime feel more uncomfortable in his own skin than he ever did.

 

Bart curls his fingers into a fist and gently wraps his knuckles against Jaime’s forehead.

 

“Not from you.”

 

He says, voice soft but firm. Jaime bites his lip at the sound of it, holding back all the things he wants to say. He takes a step back to give Bart room when he feels the speedster shifting on the stool, trying to turn around and face him.

 

Jaime couldn't help the snort that works its way out of his mouth when he spots the pattern of sparkles and rainbows forming a smiley face on Bart's chest.

 

“How many of these did you stick on yourself?” Jaime asks, reaching out with a finger to poke at a pink sparkle on Bart's sternum. He stares at the long line of ruddy skin on Bart's stomach, pocked on both sides with uneven little dots of scarred skin without looking like he's staring. Stitches, badly done by the looks of it. He wonders if Bart himself stitched it, if he had to grit his teeth or clamp down on something to keep himself from biting through his tongue because anesthetic is probably not a thing in the future.

 

Jaime aggressively focuses on the ridiculous tattoos again to keep himself from frowning.

 

“I lost count after the 12th one.” Bart says with a shrug, reaching out to wrap his arms around Jaime's waist.

 

“Ridiculous.” Jaime repeats. He glances down at the scar on Bart's stomach again before he can help it. It's a vertical line about 6 inches tall, situated almost directly under the smiley face on Bart's chest. Instead of answering, Bart leans forward and blows a loud, wet raspberry on Jaime's bare stomach.

 

Jaime lets his expression go a little slack while Bart can't see him, pondering about the strange contradiction that he is. Kiddie tattoos and scars, going to sleep draped over you and snoring like an obnoxious puppy and then sneaking off in the middle of the night for you to find at the crack of dawn, alone and silent. Even now, years later, he's still the kid making up for the vibrant silliness of a lost childhood while somehow managing to also be the survivor who accepted the weight of growing up too soon because he knew he didn't have a choice.

 

Bart doesn't lift his face away from his stomach and Jaime frowns. He doesn't say anything when he feels Bart's arms tighten around his waist, just bends down and presses a soft kiss into Bart's hair. He beats back the apology that he desperately wants to say, the apology he knows Bart does not and will not hear because the 13 years filled with horrors and dangers they could only speculate about that Bart refused to share in it's entirety, he believes is not Jaime's fault, no matter how much Jaime may say or think otherwise.

 

“Let's go back to bed cariño.” Jaime murmurs softly. 

 

Bart turns his head to the side so he could speak but his cheek remains pressed against Jaime's skin. When he speaks, it's barely above a whisper.

 

“It's okay, you can go back to sleep. I'll just...stay up for a little while longer.”

 

Jaime frowns. He lifts his head to stare out into the inky darkness of the wee hours, wondering what sorts of things are plaguing Bart's dreams this morning that he doesn't want to go to sleep. 

 

“You were reading something.” Jaime says.

 

“Hm?” Bart asks, pulling back just enough that he could look up at Jaime curiously. “Oh!” he says, expression suddenly lighting up with realization. “I don't actually know what it is, Joan just had it in the attic and I took it, I was trying to see if I can invent my own words out of the letters.”

 

“How did that go for you?”

 

“I made up three sentences and gave up.”

 

Jaime chuckles and pushes away from Bart who makes a face but reluctantly comes when Jaime tugs him up from the stool. Jaime gives him a soft smile in return, reaching up to hold Bart's face in his hands and pulling him in for a gentle, close-mouthed kiss. When he pulls away, Bart is staring at him with huge, green eyes that are both tender and troubled, seeing things that only he could. They're looking at him as if Bart did it hard enough, the bad things would go away and only Jaime would be left behind.

 

“Come,” he says, wrapping a hand around Bart's wrist and leading him back to their bed. Bart goes along willingly until Jaime climbs onto the bed. He hesitates, hovering just on the edge. Jaime tightens his fingers around his wrist and tugs gently, reaching for him with his other hand to pull him down to lie down on his lap.

 

Bart sighs when Jaime lays a hand gently on his head and Jaime threads his fingers through the auburn locks, carding through them in soft, repetitive strokes.

 

“You don't have to sleep, just be here with me.”

 

Jaime feels the brush of lips against his knee. “Okay.”

 

They stay like that, not speaking a word. When the darkness outside gives way to the soft grays and blues of dawn, Jaime reaches over and silently turns the lamp off. Bart hasn't moved at all and Jaime knows he's still awake. He traces the outlines of the temporary tattoos on Bart's back, keeping his touch light, fingertips barely brushing against the ruined skin they're stamped on.

 

When he starts rummaging around on the bedside table for the sharpie he always keeps around there to take notes during phone calls, Bart twists around to look at him curiously. He doesn't say anything when Jaime finds the sharpie and uncaps it but he makes a startled little noise when the pen touches his skin.

 

“What are you doing?” Bart asks.

 

“Doodling.”

 

He doesn't look up as he starts covering up the scars with stupid hearts and smileys and dumb, light-hearted little things that represent Bart as he should be, as Jaime wishes he would be all the time, but he could feel Bart's eyes still on him. He doesn't say anything though, just turns his head back around and stays still for Jaime's scribbling. When Jaime starts connecting some freckles into made up constellations on an unscarred portion of his back, Bart yelps and rolls away.

 

“Okay dont draw on the parts I can actually feel things on, that tickles.” He says, grabbing the sharpie out of Jaime's hand with one hand and his forearm in the other “Okay your turn.”

 

He expects Bart to scribble up and down his arms but instead Bart just writes down a single sentence on his arm. Jaime doesn't even notice the words for a second because at first they seem to be written in a made up font. He squints at the ink on his arm, trying to figure it out and blinks when he realizes Bart intentionally wrote it down so he'd be looking at it upside down and backwards.

 

Bart smiles at him when he glances up, knowing that Jaime figured it out. The scarab redundantly scans and rights the letters.

 

_Cada día te quiero más_

 

_Origin, Spanish, translation:-_ “I know what it means.” Jaime says, looking straight at Bart. The smile on his face widens and the look on his face, wildly tender, makes Jaime's heart give a vicious kick in his chest. 

 

“Good because I'm not saying it out loud, it's kind of really cheesy.” Bart says, crawling over and reaching out to put a hand on the back of his head. He draws him in for a slow, warm kiss that makes Jaime feel every stupid letter scrawled into his arm like they're branded there permanently. Bart settles down against his shoulder afterward and Jaime wraps his arms around him. They go back to sitting in silence, letting the light get brighter and the day go on slowly by without them as they sit, wrapped in blankets, scars, ink and each other. 

 


End file.
